Antwerp, Belgium
Claus studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.
1879
Algeria
Emile Claus during his journey to Algeria in 1879. Here with an Algerian traditional burnus.
Between 1869 and 1874 Claus taught at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts.
Emile Claus's studio.
1879
Algeria
Emile Claus during his journey to Algeria in 1879. Here with an Algerian traditional burnus.
Antwerp, Belgium
Claus studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp.
Between 1869 and 1874 Claus taught at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts.
Emile Claus's studio.
Claus was born in Sint-Eloois-Vijve, Belgium, on September 27, 1849. He was the twelfth child in a family of thirteen. His father, Alexander Claus, was a grocer-publican and for a brief period of time town councillor. Émile Claus’s mother, Celestine Verbauwhede, was from a Brabant skipper’s family.
As a child, Émile Claus already loved drawing and on Sunday went three kilometers on foot to the Academy of Waregem to learn how to draw. Claus’ father was absolutely resistant to the idea of his son becoming an artist and apprenticed Emile to a bakery in Lille. This was followed with a career as a supervisor on the railway and then a job as a shop worker.
The desire to paint did not let go of Claus and he eventually wrote a letter to the famous composer and musician Peter Benoit, who lived in nearby Harelbeke and was a frequent guest of the family, asking for help. With his assistance, Claus finally convinced his father and turned to painting, entering the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. Claus had to pay for his studies himself though. There he studied under direction of the professor of landscape Jacob Jacobs and the director Nicaise de Keyser, a painter of portraits and historical subjects.
Claus lived in Antwerp. Between 1869 and 1874 he taught at the Antwerp Academy of Fine Arts, working with Jacob Jacobs, a landscape painter. During his training, Claus drew the attention of and found support among the local upper middle class. By 1882 Émile Claus had finished his work on Cock Fight in Flanders. During his years in Antwerp, Claus mainly created portraits and realistic, anecdotal genre pieces.
In 1883 he moved to cottage Zonneschijn ('Sunshine') in Astene, near Deinze (East-Flanders, Belgium). There he resided until his death apart from his temporary stay in London during the First World War (1914-1918).
Artistically and financially, the artist soon prospered. Being a celebrity, he became a friend of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, the naturalist Émile Zola, the Belgian novelists and poets Cyriel Buysse, Pol de Mont, Emile Verhaeren and Maurice Maeterlinck.
He travelled around the world to attend exhibits of his artworks. The Antwerp Museum of Fine Arts bought one of his paintings, and his work De Picknick (1887) was bought by the Belgian Royal Family. Stimulated by his fellow, the author Camille Lemonnier, and inspired by the French impressionists, like Claude Monet whose works he saw for the first time during his trips to Paris in the 1890s, Claus gradually transferred from naturalistic realism to a very personal style of impressionism called "luminism".
In addition, Émile Claus gave private lessons and had quite a lot of students. One of his private students was Anna De Weert, a Belgian artist. She together with her husband Maurice De Weert spent several summers with the artist in the 1890s.
In 1904 he established the artist group called Vie et Lumière ('Life and Light'). The First World War interrupted Claus’ artistic career and international success. He escaped to London where he found a house and workshop at the banks of the river Thames. He returned in 1918. With the dawn of expressionism, Claus found his fame diminished. In 1921 he held the last exhibition in Brussels, where especially his London works made a positive impression on the audience.
The day before his death, Émile Claus had made a pastel of a bouquet of flowers, sent to him by Queen Elisabeth of Belgium.
Emile Claus is renowned as the foremost Belgian Impressionist artist in addition to being the country’s best-known painter of landscapes. Claus was a founder of the Luminist School and an extremely influential artist in his native Belgium. Among his most famous paintings are the following: The Ice Birds, Cow, Bringing in the Nets, First Communion, Hay stacks, Summer, etc. In 1919 he received the Commander of the Order of Leopold.
His works can be found in museums and galleries in different parts of the world, including the Groeningemuseum, Bruges, Belgium; the Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai, France; the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France; the Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco, United States; the Museum of Western and Eastern Art, Odessa, Ukraine.
Flax harvesting
The Ice Birds
Canal in Zeeland
The Beet Harvest
A Meeting on the Bridge
The Old Gardener
The caving in bank
Cow
The Cock Fight
Summer
Picking Blossoms
First Communion
Orchard in Flanders
Hay stacks
Sunny Day
Young peasant women at the leie
Zonnegloed
Le Pique-nique
Bringing in the Nets
Sunset over Waterloo Bridge
Charlotte Dufaux, in her wedding dress
Afternoon Along The River
Portrait de Madame Claus
Elms in a Landscape
A landscape near London
A city view of Ghent, the Sint-Joriskaai and Steendam
Bordighera
Little boy
Working in the field
December
Borders of the river Lys in summer
Bourasque sur la Tamise
A sunny orchard with sheep
Farmyard
Venice
Light Reflections on the Thames
Sunset, Waterloo Bridge
1911 Claus became a member of the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium.
At the Waregem notary Eduard Dufaux’s home, Emile Claus got acquainted with his niece Charlotte Dufaux. They got married in 1886.
An important person in the life of Émile Claus was the painter Jenny Montigny. She attended master classes at his workshop in Astene and for years shared her time between Ghent and Astene. Though Émile Claus was 26 years older than she was, they began a relationship that lasted until his death.
Jeanne (Jenny) Montigny was a Belgian painter.
Antoine Louis Camille Lemonnier was a Belgian writer, poet as well as journalist.
